Cuba Libre

Philip Brenner is professor of international relations and affiliate professor of history at American University. He is a co-editor of A Contemporary Cuba Reader and co-author of Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis.Peter Eisner is an award-winning foreign correspondent who covered Latin America for many years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Associated Press. He currently teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. His most recent book is MacArthur’s Spies.

A productive partnership between Brenner, a veteran Cuba expert, and Eisner, an accomplished journalist, has brought forth an eminently accessible, engaging journey through five centuries of Cuba’s tortured yet hopeful history— a story unified, in the authors’ view, by the island’s heroic struggles for self-determination. The indigenous Taino chief Hatuey courageously resisted European domination in the sixteenth century. Hundreds of years later, Cubans launched a bloody struggle for independence from Spain, and Fidel Castro led a socialist revolution to purge the island of U.S. influence.... Cuba Libre concludes with an empathetic and balanced discussion of the dilemmas facing Cuban society today.

• PrefacePart I: 1492–1598Chapter 1: Columbus Arrives and Spain Colonizes Cuba, 1492–1550Chapter 2: Sugar and SlaveryChapter 3: Struggle for Independence, 1868–1898Chapter 4: Cuban Independence War and US OccupationChapter 5: From Occupation to “Good Neighbor”Chapter 6: Playground of the Western World and the Rise of Batista, 1934–1958Chapter 7: The Revolutionary Struggle, 1953–1958Part II: 1959–1989Chapter 8: The Quest for SovereigntyChapter 9: Consolidating the Revolution: Culture and PoliticsChapter 10: Consolidating the Revolution: Economic Reforms, New Institutions, and Basic NeedsChapter 11: Bay of Pigs/Playa GirónChapter 12: The Missile CrisisChapter 13: Foreign Policy in the 1960s: Exporting Revolution, Chinese Flirtations, and Soviet TensionsChapter 14: Internal Adjustments and Advancing Equality, 1963–1975Chapter 15: Becoming a Third World Leader, 1970sChapter 16: Mariel Exodus—A Warning Signal, 1980Chapter 17: Change and Rectification at Home and Abroad, 1980sPart III: 1990–2016Chapter 18: The “Special Period” in a Time of Peace, 1990–2000Chapter 19: The Cuban Diaspora and Racial InequalityChapter 20: Helms-Burton, US-Cuban Relations, and Terrorism, 1995–1998Chapter 21: The Pope Goes to Cuba; Elián Goes to Miami, 1998–2000Chapter 22: The Search for a Viable Strategy, 2001–2006Chapter 23: The Transition from Fidel to Raúl Castro, 2006–2009Chapter 24: Securing Cuba’s Independence through Economic Change, 2010–2016Chapter 25: Securing Cuba’s Independence through Foreign Policy, 2010–2016Chapter 26: Change, Continuity, and the FutureAppendix: Chronology of Key EventsBibliographyIndex